Wave Two
by hal9000
Summary: I gave up on this site. This will no longer be updated.
1. Grand Entrance

Sweat beats caused momentarily distractions from the hopelessness of their situation. Strained conversations took place in the front of the ship, from the pilots who wouldn't have to fight, but beyond that everyone was still, silent, and ready. The mammoth dropship "Laureola" touched down on the base's surface, and only one person onboard wasn't scared of what was underneath. Corporal Flynn Taggart. He was ready. All he had with him now was a pistol and his demeanor to protect him, as there was no time to stock up, but he was the least nervous of the group. They had 72 hours to save the planet from the Underworld. Again.  
  
They filed out of the ship in attack formation, expecting to be surrounded by demons. But it was deserted. It recalled images of old western ghost towns and was all the more unsettling. A rocket launcher lay on the ground next to a severed hand. You couldn't help but wonder what happened to the rest of him.  
  
An uppity private picked it up, striving for anything more than a pistol. That was his fatal mistake. A huge pig-demon leaped out from the shadows and tore off his head in one swift bite.  
  
"Open fire!" shouted a worried lieutenant.  
  
The command was unnecessary, as the demon left as quickly as it had come without a mark on its massive form.  
  
"Shit!"  
  
Casualty one, Flynn tallied in his head. He intended to make sure he wasn't one of those tallied and checked to see that his pistol was fully loaded. Behind him, Flynn heard the dropship doors slam shut and its engines fire away.  
  
That left Flynn in command of a half-dozen men, armed with a single pistol and fifty bullets to their name. This would be a slaughter.  
  
They silently walked up to the main hall. It was a gargantuan construction that cast a looming shadow over everything with in a half a mile. As they approached the pig came back and slaughtered everyone except for Flynn in quick run-bys. He hadn't been here for ten minutes, but already had the blood of every one of his comrades on his uniform. It was already a massacre and the carnage had only just started.  
  
This is shaping out worse than the first time...  
  
He squeezed his eyes shut, and, preparing in a slightly Zen manner, pushed the button to open the door.  
  
To be continued... 


	2. The Battle Begins

The first thing he noticed was the smell. It was a noxious mixture of sulfur, rotting flesh, and those fucking demons! Upon smelling it a wave of nausea overtook Flynn and he considered aborting, but he pulled himself together. After a quick scan, he saw only two semi-humans about 500 yards in front of him and facing the other way. It was easy. Too easy, he thought. He wandered around the huge room, staying out of their limited sight and surveyed the area.  
  
To his utter surprise he found but one corpse, the head was nowhere to be found. Nearby him was an cast-aside pistol and a lot of spent shells. In his hands, immobile with rickets, was a chainsaw. Flynn put two and two together and assumed that when the pistol emptied he, like a good soldier, rushed headlong into battle with a chainsaw. The death was quick, he hoped.  
  
Upon taking the chainsaw, Flynn silently unclipped one of his many medals and pinned it on the body, which he learned from his patch was Private H. Frost.  
  
Quietly, Flynn put a bullet in each of the semi-human's head and took their clips.  
  
"Fuckin' scum..."  
  
He walked down the narrow hall toward the elevator, wishing he were anywhere but here. He thought of taking a vacation to the Caribbean after he pinned this Icon of Sin fucker's ass to the wall.  
  
About 300 yards ahead was a semi-circular room with a slightly used first- aid kit lying on the ground. He picked it up and put it in his pack, certain he would need it later. As he turned around toward the elevator he felt a pain not unlike being stabbed with a hot poker. Without thought he dived into the relative safety of behind the wall.  
  
He cocked his pistol and fired four rounds at the imp that had attacked him. It went down like a sack of potatoes, its brown body now crimson with blood. This was the first time Flynn ever saw an Imp's hand up close, and frankly he could have lived without the image.  
  
It was one big black burn mark covering a hole that was filled with flames, fermenting, stewing, and waiting to come out. The sulfuric smell seemed to increase from its body.  
  
Flynn walked on with a slight limp and a few broken ribs, occasionally taking potshots at the semi-human bastards running around. Memories flooded back to him of years ago when he first took on Hell. He scratched the scar on his cheek, recalling that Baron of Hell who gave it to him.  
  
Almost without thinking he pushed the elevator button and went down to Sublevel 2.  
  
He reloaded his pistol; and concluded that he would need more ammo. He wondered how many medals he would get for this mission.  
  
He listened as the elevator boomed,, clanged, and whined its way down to Sublevel 2. The doors slid open... 


	3. Power Outage

The smell was even greater in the Sublevel. Flynn didn't notice though, since the second the doors slid open a rifle shot put a huge dent in the reinforced steel wall of the elevator. He fired blindly into the room and heard a low gurgle of pain. He had hit a sum-human clutching a rifle in the windpipe. He walked in and picked up the rifle it once held. The gun lacked bullets, but that was only a momentary issue, since, like a miracle, a box of rifle shells was lying in the corner, with only five missing.  
  
Whispering a thank you to an unknown deity, Flynn loaded the gun and put the remaining shells in his pack. He still had his trusty pistol in his free hand though, as you could not be too careful in hell. He could hear the far off cry of a pig-demon and looked around and to his horror, saw a half-conscious soldier lying in a bloody heap against the wall, charred to a degree that ensured that survival was impossible.  
  
Concern overtook Flynn, and to his own surprise he found himself rushing over to the man.  
  
"In the... ceiling."  
  
With that he slumped over in Flynn's arms, very much dead. A loud hiss and a ball of fire flying past his ear told Flynn that an imp was around. He spun around to see... nothing.  
  
Intrigued, Flynn looked around slowly, pacing from one corner of the small room to the next, and back again. Another ball of fire showed him that it wasn't a delusion and he started to worry. A third knocked a bleeding, burning, limping, and scared Flynn to the ground. Concocting a plan, he stood in the middle of the room, and spun around over and over, waiting for a fireball.  
  
He fell to the ground with a new burn. He had seen nothing and was scanning every corner of the room. Where the fuck was it?  
  
It struck him like a freight train. The ceiling! He looked up and sure enough, a hole the size and shape of a manhole was present, housing a maniac imp. A good two shots fell the beast.  
  
Flynn walked on, ignoring the loud CRASH the imp's body made as it tumbled to the ground. His footsteps echoed atmospherically in the dark halls. He felt like he was wrapped in whatever made up a nightmare. The lights were out in this section, a consequence of a huge shootout. But with what?  
  
He looked around futilely in the darkness. Whatever this was, it wasn't anything he'd ever seen before. He fired into the darkness and got a brief view of something big and fast through the muzzle blast. The ground shook and the lights flickered into existence momentarily.  
  
The shape moved closer and the ground shook from its heavy, lumbering footsteps. Flynn fired again and again, spent shells clanking on the ground almost faster than he fired them but the thing didn't seem to even notice. It knocked him aside irritably and he smacked a wall, hard.  
  
He landed about twenty-five feet away, facedown and semi-conscious next to... a rocket launcher! Thank god for small favors. He limped over to the massive form, and took aim. It barely noticed until the projectile was lodged into its enormous back. Blue-green blood spewed everywhere and burnt Flynn's skin.  
  
The thing let out a burst of machine gun fire and Flynn took cover behind a courtesy desk. The "INFORMATION" sign tumbled into his lap, shot up and now reading "IN O TION". He threw it aside and reloaded desperately. He poked his head up just enough to aim, and fired, right in the base of its skull. It crashed to the ground, denting it.  
  
"Man, was that a massive motherfucker," Flynn thought aloud.  
  
Upon looking at it, he donned it a "Cyberdemon" do to its ram's horns and the large machine gun welded to its left hand. He reloaded all his weapons, now a little more careful.  
  
He walked on, not sure where to, but he felt like he had to keep moving or the evil of this place would envelope him and crush his brittle bones like toothpicks. He sighed loudly and gripped the crucifix he had strung across his neck. His ears were ringing like he was front and center during the London Philharmonic's rendition of "Jingle Bells".  
  
The lights flickered back to life timidly, then shut down totally; even the computers and emergency lights. And the elevator. Flynn would have to take the stairs. The solitude and preparation gained in the elevator ride, a mobile citadel, down the drain. Dammit.  
  
He walked on, passing a large computer readout of his current location; Space Station One. It was the one thing working since it had its own battery cell in case of an emergency like this. It emitted an eerie green glow that all but beckoned Flynn. He studied it and concluded that he wasn't far from the stairwell. Or was that a storage closet? Shit, was that map hard to read; he thought.  
  
He laced up his boots, treated his wounds, and set off to find that goddamned stairwell... 


	4. In the Hall

The halls near the stairwell were a mess. Dozens of human bodies lay strewn across the dim corridor; all with the same dark black burns on their legs and lower torso. Flynn rounded the elliptical corners blasting at whatever caused that fucking carnage—but always finding nothing.  
  
He had heard stories about this thing from dying members of the wave 1 of his platoon's first dealing with Satan. They all called it the same thing: an Arch-vile. They were said to have come from the biblical Tenth Level and were the direct minions of both Beelzebub and Satan themselves. Only thirteen existed, and from his reckoning, five were killed of the First Wave.  
  
It was all in the bible, but not the part we read. The Church had classified six chapters of the original Bible, known to them as the Book of Waning Time. The soldiers were all given a copy before leaving Gateway and were the only living humans to ever see it aside from the Pope and Father Theophilus, the only man to ever exorcise someone in real life.  
  
Flynn spit out blood from a pierced vein on his lip. He had his shotgun in one hand and his pistol in the other, prepared to fire them both. He knew he would need to.  
  
The Arch-vile made no noise as it rounded the corner and raised its arms above its head. A low muttering in Latin escaped his lips and his black eye glazed over fire red. He called his underlings.  
  
Flynn heard the scampering of the imps immediately. He spun around and saw a sight that would haunt his dreams for his whole life. The chalk-white Arch-vile, six feet of rippling muscle and agility had his hands raised in a "Y" and behind him, rounding the corner, came rows upon rows of imps. Pushing, clawing, fighting, they came running on all fours. Several were crawling along the walls with such speed and agility that Flynn was scarcely sure he wasn't hallucinating.  
  
He stood stunned for a moment, then regained his composure and fired systematically into the ranks. He retreated behind a steel door, windowless thank God, and reloaded frantically.  
  
Behind him lay a chain gun, its slick and polished metal streaked with blood. He holstered his pistol and picked up the chain gun in one fluid motion. He kicked open the door and blasted at the imps in front of him spitefully. Rows fell but were resurrected by the Arch-vile, only to be felled again. The arch-vile proved to be, impossibly, impervious to bullets.  
  
Flynn dove behind into the stairwell again. It was then that he remembered a verse from the Book of Waning Time:  
  
"6. And Lucifer decreed that swords and spears shant vanquish the Arch- vile. For only a gouging from that of Hell could fell a beast from the Ninth Level or its minion."  
  
He needed to draw the fucker onto one of the imps' spikes. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This would take some thought. He was only half aware of the banging on the door until a small portion of it collapsed. It was the size of a bottle cap but was one of the scariest things Flynn ever saw.  
  
On impulse, he dropped his guns and grabbed an I-beam on the ceiling, dangling him only three inches off the ground. The door caved in moments later, and he shifted his weight radically, sending a heavy and unexpected kick into the chest of the Arch-vile. Caught off guard, it lost balance and fell against an imp, spearing itself.  
  
Spearing, and thereby killing itself. Horrified, it melted away to ash, as did the imps, who, by its calling, became its minions. Flynn fell to the ground relieved and only then did he notice he was standing in the stairway.  
  
He walked down the steps triumphantly. 


End file.
